Pile of change leads cops to Staten Island burglary suspect

An 18-year-old burglar who stole a jug of coins from his neighbor's house in Staten Island's Brighton Heights community last month ended up caught when a worker at a neighborhood store remembered the teen paid with a lot of change not long after the burglary, authorities said.

Scott Perlmutter -- who last year was arrested on charges he was carrying a stash of the anti-depressant Xanax inside Curtis High School -- was arrested yesterday and charged with the May 6 burglary. He's also accused of sexual misconduct because, police allege, he had sex with a 15-year-old girl.

Perlmutter, who lives on Portland Place in Brighton Heights, is accused of breaking a basement window to get into a house across the street from where he lives.

Inside, he found a jug with $300 in change, but that's not all he took, court papers allege.

He also stole two gold rings, two children's crucifixes, several diamond rings, two gold bracelets, one pink Verizon Chocolate cell phone, an onyx ring, a set of car keys, two iPods and two digital cameras, one silver, one green, police allege.

When detectives investigated the burglary, they found a store employee who remembered Perlmutter bringing in a heap of change, a law enforcement source said.

Detectives questioned him and his 15-year-old girl friend, and the girl told police about the burglary, the source said. Perlmutter made a full confession, and most of the stolen goods were recovered, authorities said.

Perlmutter also admitted to having sex with his girl friend at multiple times since they started dating -- back when he was 17 and she was 14 -- and sharing marijuana and Xanax with her, authorities allege.

"We would meet at my house and have intercourse for a few hours, smoke a blunt," he told police, according to court papers. Cops found the teen carrying 11 Ziploc bags of marijuana when they picked him up for questioning on Tuesday.

While the age difference between the two was too small to warrant a statutory rape charge, Perlmutter still faces misdemeanor sexual misconduct and child endangerment charges.

The top charge, second-degree burglary, carries a sentence of three and a half to 15 years if he's convicted at trial. Back in September, police arrested Perlmutter after getting a tip that he was selling Xanax inside Curtis High School. They found 19 Xanax pills in his pockets, but only charged him with misdemeanor possession, since there were no eyewitnesses to any sales.

The charge against him was ultimately dismissed and sealed, a law enforcement source said.